PLC warned that an extended grounding of supply helicopters could have a "major impact" on energy operations in the North Sea, as producers attempted to find alternative aircraft and ships to ferry crew and equipment.

More than half the helicopter fleet used to supply oil and gas platforms in British North Sea waters remained grounded Tuesday as operators imposed a voluntary freeze on using Super Puma helicopters, following a fatal crash on Friday. U.K. air-safety authorities continued to investigate the accident off the Shetland Islands coast, which claimed the lives of four oil workers.

Super Pumas, which are made by the Eurocopter unit of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., EADSY +0.33% continued to fly to platforms in Norway and Australia. EADS shares closed at €43.78 ($58.53) in Paris on Tuesday, down 1.6%.

Offshore operators plan to share the remaining helicopter fleet and suspend routine work. Industry group Oil & Gas UK said the suspension would cause delays and flight backlogs, and could have adverse effects on offshore activities in the North Sea, a major oil-producing region. The area is home to Brent crude oil, the global pricing benchmark.

BP, one of the North Sea's largest operators, said there was no immediate risk to oil production from its fields, which pump 100,000 barrels of oil a day from U.K. fields. But a spokesman said a prolonged suspension of the workhorse Super Pumas could have a "major impact" on offsho...

(Reuters) - Spain's prime minister published his tax returns on Saturday in a bid to quell reports he and other conservative politicians received secret cash payments but the opposition said many questions remain unanswered.
The government's website posted tax authority documents detailing Mariano Rajoy's income and tax payments from the past ten years. His ruling People's Party (PP) also revealed four years of financial accounts on Friday, in another attempt to put the matter to rest.
The scandal, centered on ledgers supposedly made by a former party treasurer, have cut support for the PP to the lowest level on record and pushed up borrowing costs just as it seemed Spain was getting to grips with a financial crisis that had raised questions about the future of the euro zone.
Former PP treasurer Luis Barcenas has described as fake handwritten ledger entries published on January 31 by El Pais newspaper purporting to show payments funded by construction firms made to PP leaders including Rajoy.
Rajoy has said the payments were not made and that the party is organizing an external audit into the affair.
The opposition Socialists said the published accounts of Rajoy and the PP did nothing to explain the Barcenas papers.
Socialist spokeswoman Soraya Rodriguez said Spaniards wanted more than Rajoy's tax records.
"Spaniards are fed up of waiting for answers that never come," she told journ...

The year 2007 brought one of the biggest scandals in memory to hit the futures community. Brokerage Sentinel Management Group collapsed in what prosecutors later said was a fraud by its chief executive and its head trader, leaving customers out hundreds of millions of dollars. That December, one of the leaders of the industry, Russell Wasendorf Sr., warned authorities that beefing up policing in response would be overkill.
"The regulators missed on this one, but fraud is not easily detected," Wasendorf wrote in an editorial in Stocks, Futures and Options, or SFO, an industry magazine he published. "Those who set out to line their own pockets have ways of hiding it, at least for a while."
He knew what he was talking about. Unbeknownst to regulators, Wasendorf had been stealing from his customers' accounts for years, a fact he confessed after he tried to asphyxiate himself in a car outside Peregrine's headquarters in July. The dramatic end to his career came amid the implementation of electronic monitoring by regulators of Peregrine's accounts, a step Wasendorf had resisted.
Interviews with former employees, colleagues and associates, as well as an examination of court filings and company documents seen by Reuters, paint a picture of an entrepreneur who, by using relatively simple tools, was able to keep regulators off the scent for years. He did this even...